Page 3 of Just Between Us

“You too, Rich.” She smiled back before disappearing.

I waited a moment, poured myself another scotch, and knocked it back in one before going up to bed myself.

CHAPTER THREE

LUCY

I layon the spare bed in Annie’s room thinking about what the fuck just happened between me and Rich in the kitchen. Everything about the contact had been loaded with sexual tension. It had to be the drink talking because there was no way that man was interested in me. I was his kid’s best friend. He was very clearly out of bounds. But, Christ, that one interaction had me so wet and thinking about how much I wanted someone to look at me with the intensity Rich had. Even if I was imagining it.

I wasn’t sure when my interest in Richard changed from him being my best friend’s dad to something more. I’d been friends with Annie since we were three. We met in playschool, and we had been best friends ever since. Inseparable. There was a brief point in our teenage years when One Direction were on the scene, when for a moment I thought that she might fall out with me.

“You like One Direction? Are you serious?”

I nodded. “I do. You don’t hate me, do you?”

She took me by the hand and looked at me sternly. “Well, that’s okay, as long as you don’t want Niall because he’s mine.”

“Oh, God, no. He’s not my type.” I laughed in reply. “I like Harry.”

That was close to a fight as we got in our friendship. From then on, Annie had it all planned. She was going to marry Niall; I was going to marry Harry. We had every last detail mapped out to perfection. A double wedding with the other band members singing to us about our love. I laughed every time I thought back on how beautifully naïve we’d been back then.

I think things really changed for us a few years later when the band broke up, and then the bottom dropped out of Annie’s world when her mum announced she was leaving Rich.

The divorce had been hard on both of them. Annie felt abandoned; for a while, she derailed. She was sneaking around and drinking, hanging out with the scummiest boys in our school. There was a moment when I thought even our friendship wouldn’t be able to last the turmoil. I tried to keep in mind that she was hurting a lot from her mum’s absence, but it was hard to watch powerless as my friend self-destructed.

Rich had also taken it hard. Not only had his wife, Erica, been climbing the corporate ladder, apparently, her biggest leg up was getting her leg over with the boss, Portia.

Rich had turned to drink; his ego had taken a battering. He had, on more than one drunken occasion, asked me whether he was not enough of a man that a woman could outdo him in the bedroom. I was sixteen then, and I didn’t know what to say to him. At that age, I was just starting to really date boys. The mid-life crisis of my best mate’s dad post-divorce was not something I was ready to take on.

I mean, sure, he was a little rough around the edges, but he still had a dazzling smile, a full head of slightly greying hair, and his dad bod wasn’t that bad. A little gym time and he would be back on track. If I was honest, thinking about Rich like that was something I didn’t want to do for too long. The man waslovely, and there was something about him I had started to like. Crushing on my best friend’s dad seemed like a recipe for disaster, so I tried as best as my immature little heart could to put it out of my mind

Annie spent a lot of time in my house back then too, only going home if I went with her. She was struggling enough with her mum’s abandonment without having to deal with her dad’s drunken depression too.

My mum was incredible with both of them. Annie got all the TLC she needed, and Rich got the wake-up call he deserved.

After three months for Annie and ten months for Rich, my mother’s tough love instinct kicked in. Annie was told that her mum didn’t deserve to ruin her future just because she didn’t want to be with Rich anymore. Once she had helped Annie through the worst of it, she politely took Rich aside and told him that for the sake of his daughter, he needed to give his sorry ass a good shake and snap out of it. Erica leaving wasn’t about him, and as much as it hurt him to accept it, Annie was his priority now, and he needed to do right by her.

I don’t think I ever saw a drink in Rich’s hand from that day on. Annie and Rich had become a team, and Erica came around to see Annie less and less. Surprisingly, Annie seemed to take that in her stride, secure now in her place in the world with a dad who had her back at all times. She thrived, sailed through her A-Levels, and we headed off to university together.

But as I lay there, trying to ignore how soaked my snatch was, and how much I longed to play with my clit, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to see my friend’s dad in the same way again

CHAPTER FOUR

RICH

It wasn’t as though thinkinglike this about a woman was a new thing for me. I was just a lot out of practice. Erica had been the person I thought I was going to spend my life with, and I hadn’t looked at anyone else in that time.

But the divorce happened and Annie moved out to go to university. While I hadn’t seen anyone seriously, I’d had a handful of encounters while my house had been empty.

What was insanely new for me was that this was my child’s best friend. I’d been around Lucy since she was three, watched her and my daughter grow up together. She had been in my house as much as she’d been in her own. And there I was, lying in my bed in the dark with my cock rock hard, thinking about every inch of her beautiful face. Thinking about how my body had reacted to her touch, to her closeness. Thinking about what a fucking dirty old man I was for lusting after her like that.

I tried to shake the thought that she was lying on the other side of the wall from me. Somehow, I needed to put out of my mind the notion she might be right there, thinking similar thoughts about me. Pulling my pillow over my face and growled my frustrations into it. Tomorrow, I’d text my ‘friend’ and see if her house was empty. Perhaps I could relieve some of myfrustrations with her. It wasn’t ideal, but wasn’t that the point of a friend with benefits?

There wasa knock at the door, and I knew who it was before I answered. Annie had mentioned Lucy was going to be calling over to meet her when she got out of work. It had started to feel like she had been arriving a little earlier each time. Part of me wondered if that was because she was coming to see me. The other part told me to remember I was old enough to be her father and to get a damn grip of myself.

I grinned when I answered, trying hard not to notice the twinkle in her eyes, that her mouth looked utterly kissable. The smell of her perfume teased me as she walked past me into the kitchen.

I offered to make extra food for her, and she accepted. Sliding gracefully onto a stool at the breakfast bar, she watched me move around the kitchen. I felt her eyes on me as I shifted around the space. I couldn’t deny the effect it had knowing she was there looking at me.

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